[Arnfinn Madsen]

I was going to bring a car I have rented back to the airport in Poznan, Poland today. I drove out from the parking lot and decided I was so familiar with the city now that I could take a shortcut. However, after a few curves I realized my short cut was not so smart. I turned around, and drove back. 50 metres down the street a car blocks the road in front of me. I have to stop and out of the car comes two men in uniform rushing towards me.

I roll down the window, and I am used to police officers not being so fluent in language, so I start speaking in Polish with them. My 1000-word or so vocabulary is however insufficient and the whole discussion becomes very complicated. They ask me for a lot of documents and I somewhat manage to explain that it is not my car and I have no clue what kind of documents they want. I give them a few papers from the gloves' compartment. They seem to be satisfied with them and hand them back.

Then they explain me that I have been driving in the wrong direction [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]. The matter is however that I turned around at a spot from which the sign was not visible and their headlights blocked the next one. We spend something like 10 minutes discussing this but to my disappointment (I have about a 80% rate of not getting fines) they say that I should get a minimum fine (appx. $100).

Then, they ask me where I live, and I explain to them that I live in Poland. They find this very hard to believe and seem to think that it is some kind of trick to make them send the fine to a non-existing address. They say that I have to pay there, and I will get a receipt. However, as I have no cash I say that I will have to go to a cash machine. They instruct me to follow them, and after about a 5 min. drive we get there. I take out the cash and one of them tells me to wait in the police car while the other one will write the fine.

In the police car our communication becomes better as I give up completely on Polish and his English is rather well (seemed like he did not want to embarass his colleague by switching to English). He tells me that my maneuver was very dangerous and driving in Poland in general is dangerous. I tell him that I have been driving a lot around in Poland and I know how dangerous it is and I would never do anything to add extra risk. That sentence must have been convincing, because he stops talking with me and after a 2 minutes discussion with his colleague (who has now issued the fine), he tells me that he realizes that the sign could not be visible from my perspective. He tells me that giving me a fine feels wrong, since I am not to blame and tells me I am free to leave without any fine.

So after a shortcut costing me about half an hour, I head to the airport [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].